Take Care: Warning Signals for Canada's Health

Paul G. Thomas is a professor of political science at the University of
Manitoba and the co-author of Canadian Public Administration:
Problematical Perspectives.

The central theme of this book, which arose out of a conference
sponsored by the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions, is that
neoconservative and market-oriented policies in the health field are
having negative effects on patients and caregivers, particularly women.
The first chapter, which provides an overview of Canada’s health
system, argues that Canada’s spending on health care is neither out of
line with that in other industrial countries nor rising at an
unsustainable rate; for the authors, the problem resides in the fact
that the system is dominated by doctors and hospitals and focused
excessively on acute care. Chapter 2 examines how the Free Trade
Agreement will challenge the principles of medicare and contribute to
rising costs, especially drug prices. The most interesting chapter,
entitled “Voices from the Ward,” features those health-care workers
who came to the microphones at the conference to relate how cutbacks
will endanger the health of patients and add to institutional and social
costs in the long run.

This book does not offer a comprehensive or entirely objective picture
of the health system; however, it does provide a forum for the different
voices that need to be heard in the health-care debate.